Eden Sher Brought to Tears at ‘The Middle’ 100th Episode Party

It may have been celebration, but Eden Sher of “The Middle” got a little emotional with the rest of the cast as they celebrated their 100th episode Oct. 19 at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

While talking about how much she loves her castmates, Sher couldn’t help but start crying while talking to reporters.

“Are you going to cry?” asked co-star Neil Flynn. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know!” she squealed.

Besides her emotions, Sher, who plays the ever optimistic Sue Heck, faced another obstacle: a large cast on her foot, which caused her to almost fall a few times.

“I feel like being injured is like being drunk all the time, because you’re constantly stumbling,” she laughed.

Her castmates were there for her, though, and the actors seemed like family on the red carpet. In fact, Flynn took it upon himself to fix the tie of his fictional son, Charlie McDermott. Patricia Heaton, the matriarch of the show and mother of four sons in real life, said she mothers the younger cast members at times, including an instance with McDermott just a couple days before the party.

“He said ‘Hey, do you know a good place to buy a suit?’” she said. “And it’s two days before the event, and I said, ‘Charlie, you know, you could go to wardrobe. They have all your sizes, and they can actually just run and get you a couple of suits.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh really, they can do that?’ I felt very motherly at that moment.”

McDermott admitted to having learned a lot on the set over the past few years, as “The Middle” was one of his first big roles. Four years ago when he first started on the show, he didn’t realize how hard it would be to get to the 100th episode.

“There was a little bit of naivety when I first started,” he said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do this forever.’ I kind of didn’t realize what the odds were.”

However, Flynn had plenty of faith in the show and his even-keeled patriarch character from the get-go.

“I thought it was a show that was sort of right down the middle — no pun intended — of American taste,” he explained. “I felt like it was trying hard enough without trying too hard, which I guess could be Mike Heck’s motto.”

Creators and executive producersEileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline said their own Midwestern upbringings inspired the show, and that a lot of the stories are not completely fiction.

“Probably the crazier the story, the more it really happened,” Heline explained. “So many things that happened to me in my childhood now happen to Sue.”

Heisler added that the youngest of the Heck family, the quirky Brick Heck, played by Atticus Shaffer, was inspired by her own son.

“We have an episode right now that we were just doing where the family is gathered around, helping Brick talk to a girl on the computer,” she said. “That’s something that happened in my house, and while it was happening, I went, ‘Oh, story!’”

Also in attendance for the festivities were WBTV’s Peter Roth and ABC’s Paul Lee. The 100th episode of “The Middle” will air Oct. 23 on ABC.

I have to admit that this show is refreshing compared to most sitcoms on network T.V. It is refreshing to know that not everyone is perfect, with great homes, jobs, fashion, etc. I am not a television person necessarily; however on rare occasion, I will breeze through the channels on my remote and if the Middle is on, I will stop to watch. Nice family. Authentic characters.

Well said. It’s really one of the few great sitcoms of middle-class life, up there with Roseanne and All in the Family. By contrast, while “Modern Family” gets all the attention, those characters are insulated from anything resembling real life by an unseen giant cushion of money.